The genre 'Netspeak'. A contribution of the Internet for English as a World Language

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Erfurt (Philosophische Fakultät Institut für Anglistik), course: English as a World Language, language: English, abstract: The present paper puts a focus on the contribution of the Internet genre 'Netspeak' for the English language. In the context of English as a global language the paper firstly examines the status of the English language on the World Wide Web today for both native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS) and tries to describe in which ways these two groups use English to perform a wide range of communicative functions. Furthermore, the paper describes the relatively new term 'Netspeak' and provides an overview of some distinctive linguistic features and patterns of this specific genre of 'electronically mediated communication' (Chrystal 2010). In addition 'Netspeak' is defined as a genre and the present paper gives explanations why it can be considered to be closely connected to the concept of community of practice. Finally the educational implications of 'Netspeak' for English Language Teaching (ELT) will be discussed together with a proposal for a teaching unit about 'Netspeak'.